1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus and a wireless communication method.
2. Related Art
In the related art, a device is known that is equipped with an infrastructure mode in which wireless connections are made to communication terminals with an external access point serving as a relay station, and Wi-Fi (a registered trademark) Direct mode (hereinafter referred to as a “direct wireless connection mode”) in which the communication terminals perform peer-to-peer direct wireless connection without involving an access point. For example, a communication apparatus that is able to operate in the infrastructure mode and the direct wireless connection mode at the same time is disclosed in JP-A-2014-225861.
Incidentally, despite the fact that a configuration for making a connection to an external access point is employed, for example, because the external access point is outside of a range of possible communication, is powered off, and so forth, in a case where an access point is not connected to a wireless communication apparatus, the wireless communication apparatus performs a search for the access point in order to make a connection to a configuration-finished access point. When searching for the access point, a wireless LAN adapter performs dynamic scan that sequentially transmits probe requests over all channels while changing the channels one by one. At this point, if, over one channel, the wireless LAN adapter can perform communication at the same time, when the access point is searched for in a state where a connection is made to a wireless communication terminal in the direct wireless connection mode using a certain channel, because the dynamic scan uses one channel, the communication with the wireless communication terminal in the direct wireless connection mode stops. Therefore, for example, in a case where a printer as the wireless communication apparatus receives printing data from a smart device as the wireless communication terminal that is connected in the direct wireless connection mode, because the printer searches for (performs the dynamic scan on) the access point, in some cases, a delay occurs in completing communication of the printing data, or data communication is interrupted.